When We Dead Awaken Poem by John F. McCullagh

When We Dead Awaken

Rating: 5.0




My trusted family doctor said
“Sit down, I have bad news.
Your PSA is very high
there are tests we have to do.”


I sat numbly as if in shock.
I scarcely heard a word.
This can’t be happening to me
This whole thing is absurd.

I have a wife, three kids I love
Important work to do
A house in a good suburb,
With a mortgage payment due.

* * * *
I went into the hospital
And they performed the test.
I can’t say now which was worse-
the pain or my distress.

I started bleeding heavily
The room swam from my view
They told me later that I spent
Three days in I.C.U.

Three days I spent dead to this world
Like Jesus in the tomb
But no angel awakened me-
just the beeping breathing tube.

** **
The biopsy was negative
No cancer cells were found
They gave me back this life again,
but turned my world around.

I walked alone along the beach
Where sea contends with land
I thought about my life restored
my life’s work seemed like sand.


I noticed as I walked along
The verge of sand and sea
The busy tide washed out my steps-
all evidence of me.


The god$ I’ve worshipped all my life
Are mortal just like me.
But the God stuff is eternal
Like the salt and unplumbed sea.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Chuck Audette 11 December 2009

Another gem of a poem, with a perfect moral. I wonder if Lillian is thinking of 'The Dead' by James Joyce... chuck

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Lillian Thomas 13 November 2009

very nice, thought-provoking piece. where did you come up with that title? It seems I know it from somewhere else., like an Irish playwright or poet used it? ? ? I have heard it before i think or something like it.

0 0 Reply
Ray Lucero 27 October 2009

John, Nice write. Quite a story. Life's lessons are unpredictable, second chances divine. Peace, Ray Lucero

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